Meanwhile meanwhile... The Wingnuts have discovered they too should be concerned about hackable Electronic Voting Machines, as we find in this article posted yesterday over at RedState blog --- the site co-founded by serial plagiarist and disgraced former Washington Post blogger (for three days anyway) Ben Domenech --- concerning new ownership of Sequoia by Venezuelan firm Smartmatic.

Apparently, the writer is concerned about Electronic Voting Machines only now that he's realized Smartmatic may be owned or controlled or unduly influenced by one Hugo Chavez. He goes so far as to quote these words by another blogger in his article:

It is extremely worrying indeed that a company with connections to the Hugo Chavez regime has been selected to run elections in a county of Chicago and given carte blanche to operate in the USA and other countries.

While we're glad to see the Wingnuts suddenly giving a damn about Electronic Voting --- now that they're concerned about their own ox being gored by a company which may have left-leaning ownership --- we're hardly surprised that the anonymous blogger who calls him or herself "AcademicElephant" (we'll presume it's a "he") didn't seem to have such concerns about another Voting Machine Company with "connections to the George W. Bush regime [being] selected to run elections" all over our country in 2004 during one of the most contentious elections in our country's history.

But of more concern for the moment, now that Mr. Elephant has suddenly decided to be worried about such important matters as a transparent and accountable democracy, he sadly exhibits the all-too-familiar Wingnut tendency of having a problem with that whole pesky "fact thing".

By way of example, Mr. Elephant decides right off the bat to use some of the same tired old misleading propaganda in one of his early grafs...

Even after repeated investigations revealed no substantive irregularities in the Ohio 2004 presidential vote--after all, Mr. Bush won Ohio by a larger percentage of votes than that by which Mr. Kerry won Pennsylvania, so this was hardly a replay of Florida--the conspiracy theories continued to flourish

We're not sure which "repeated investigations" Mr. Elephant is referring to, but one such investigation which revealed more than a few "substantive irregularities" in more than 100 pages can be found here. It was in the hands of all 100 United States Senators on the morning of January 6th, 2005 as they debated whether to certify Ohio's Electors while repeating over and over again on the Congressional record that "there was no evidence of any problems in Ohio's election."

Have a feeling Mr. Elephant hasn't bothered to read that report.

Nor, has read of the "substantive irregularities" documented in the 767 pages of this book. Or even this new, digested version which may be easier for Senor Elephant to plow through.

As to the "larger percentage" by which Elephant claims Bush beat Kerry in Ohio being larger than the percentage by which Kerry beat Bush in Pennsylvania...well, we're not really sure what the hell that actually has to do with anything. Is he suggesting there were "substantive irregularities" in PA? Please feel free to investigate and report on them, if so. Otherwise, he would seem to be doing nothing more than "flourish conspiracy theories," we guess.

For the record, in re: that "larger percentage"...Just 6 votes recorded for Kerry instead of Bush in each Ohio precinctin 2004 would have given the state to Kerry. Just 6 votes. And we've seen more than enough "substantive irregularities" in Ohio over the last year and half that we've been reporting on these matters, to understand quite clearly that had any real investigation of the election taken place (hell, simply counting the actual votes might have done the trick!) we'd likely find that Bush didn't receive more votes than Kerry in the state. As it is, and as Mr. Elephant doesn't seem concerned that the votes in Ohio were neither counted, nor recounted, we may never know.

But Elephant Man's conspiracy theories continue...

Given this outpouring of self-righteous concern over a private American company whose CEO was exercising his constitutional right to political free speech marketing its voting machines to the government, I find it interesting that there is no corresponding blogswarm over the news that a government-connected Venezuelan company is doing the same thing with what I consider to be far more troubling consequences.

The "far more troubling consequences" he's referring to there, of course, would seem to be the fact that ownership of the company may be influenced by someone who doesn't care for the Bush Administration, rather than someone who, Diebold's fomer CEO Walden O'Dell, raised at least $100,000 for their campaign and publicly pledged to deliver the state of Ohio to George W. Bush in a fundraising letter to Republicans.

To be clear, we don't like the private ownership of any such company being given complete and secret control over our public elections. Further, as Chavez' ownership or influence of the Smartmatic company (which only recently purchased Sequoia) is far less understood or even clear, it would seem unlikely there would be any "corresponding blogswarm" akin to the dribs and drabs about Diebold's former CEO O'Dell which have showed up only after persistent noise made by a small group of folks on the Internet who thought it noteworthy enough to try and make quite a bit of noise about! Over a three year period of time!

For BRAD BLOG's part, we've been reporting just about everything we have time to discuss concerning Sequoia, Diebold, ES&S, Hart InterCivic and all the rest. We're an equal opportunity Election Integrity Advocate. And yes, we've covered the mysterious new ownership of Sequoia and their relation to Chavez in these pages as well. We've also called out Sequoia for their failing, and now proven-hackable, machines in Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Nevada, California and anywhere else that they are being used to the greatest threat and destruction of our Electoral Democracy.

Lest any of this dissuade the wingnut bloggers from hammering on the Election Transparency Drum, we welcome the Elephant's entry into the same fight we have been in for some time hoping to restore the integrity of America's crumbling democracy. We just wish, however, that he'd get a few more facts right, set the country-dividing partisan bullshit and propaganda aside, and stand up for American Values no matter whose ox may be "Kerried" in the bargain.

What's the problem? He doesn't think we were worried with the voting machine manufacturers having ties to George Bush and the Repuglican party? Alright!!! Hugo for President! At least Hugo gave the U.S. cut rate heating oil. Our Preznit Bush raised the price. What a country, eh?

Interesting, your comment "If e-vote machines are hackable, and they have been prove so, then terrorists or other country's leaders can pick our government".

And we know that they would not choose this regime, just like Americans wouldn't, unless they were terrorists. The terrorists are at an all time recruitment high, while our military is at record lows.

The "terrists" would want to "stay the course", because, even conservatives are now admitting that the war is a failure (link here). Not a failure because of "shock and awe", but because in the final analysis it is "awe shit".

Nevertheless, it is academic, public elections should be regulated by public policy which is not partisan. And it is also a sovereign concept, any nation has the sole right to do its own elections.

This nut is plain wrong about the Bush "margin of victory" in Ohio. Kerry won more narrowly in PA (25,647 votes) than did Bush in OH (118,647), but that translates to a narrower percentage margin of 2.11% for Bush in OH vs. 2.5% for Kerry in PA. (My calculations are based on the "official" tally, which of course may not be accurate in OH due to fraud.)

The Republicans and Chavez hate each other's guts. That's a well known fact.

If Hugo Chavez really does own the e-voting machines, they why aren't the Democrats in control of Congress and the White House?

It's because he doesn't own them! The Republicans still do!

Case closed.

Regardless of who does own them, if the November election results aren't accurate and fair this time around, the recent multi million Latino marches will look like a church social compared to what will transpire in the weeks after the next stolen elections.

It won't be me personally who will make the Latino marches look like a church social if the November elections are not perceived to be fair and accurate. It will be the millions of people who are fed up with the obviously flawed voting systems, who will flood the streets of Washington and other major cities.

I suppose that is because there are different ways of establishing them.

But the bottom line is that there are over 3000 of them and they have different laws, procedures, methods, machines, and people for doing elections.

There is no one place to go to find out all of the issues that regard electronic voting machines in all the counties. What machines are used, how secure are they. All we know is that when we hack a machine, it has been hacked for all counties.

The logistics is a daunting task that only the powerful republican dictatorship can tackle with complete abandon, and bring to the ground.

That is what I expect them to do, and once done, the victim will have a difficult time getting back up.

Another problem, beyond the logistics of 3000+ counties, is the speed at which the attempt to regulate electronic voting machines is implemented.

The discourse in the hearing you mentioned, shows the problem:

"Senator Debra Bowen: And just to be clear, even though this is 2006, we're not using the 2005 standards right now.

Systest (Brian Phillips): Right. They're not mandatory until 2007.

Senator Debra Bowen: So, to my knowledge no state or jurisdiction in the country is currently using the 2005 standards. We're all doing our voting systems using --- It's very confusing out there in real person-land to have a 2005 standard that is not being used in 2006.

Systest (Brian Phillips): Right. It's essentially a way to identify them. We are testing to 2002 currently and again we look at how they meet the 2005 just as an added value to the vendor so they're prepared when the 2005s are mandatory" (link here, bold added).

Yes, using 2002 standards to apply to 2006 elections. This shows that the newest and presumably better regulations are not going to be used until 2007.

Even then I think it is still discretionary ... up to the states and counties. The ITA's point this out:

"Well there's a difference between testing in a lab and working in real life. You've got far more components, let's say Travis County Texas may have several thousand polling place devices. We as a test lab may have two or three, that's all that's available to us. We're also looking at, we don't, what I should say is when we're testing it to the VSS we're not really looking at election day processes either, what are some of the controls in place and some of the security measures in place and things such as that. So that'll vary from county to county and precinct to precinct itself so we donít really look at that. And that can have a play on how things will work out in the field"(ibid, bold added).

So in years to come, when the standards are not years and years old, there is still requirements for laws that mandate using the proper standards. In other words, one county can use a different standard than another county, or none at all.

So we are very early into computerized voting systems, even tho, computer science is better off than that. Computer technology works better than the dismal election landscape implements it.

Imagine building a powerful desktop computer based on 2002 science. The whole thing tends to change in 18 months or less. Standards older than that become obsolete and for real practical purposes, useless.

I wish Chavez was my president. He is smart and compassionate. If Venezuela does own some of our voting machines, I'll feel a lot better than just republicans owning them. Maybe we'll get a two party system after all.

Chavez's machines record who you vote for in addition to allowing the vote to be flipped to whatever the controller wants.

The Venezeulans have known this a Loooong time. That is why the last referendum _noone_ went to vote except for government employees who were required too (15% turnout). Read the EU report on it.

That US electronic voting opponents have not looking into the Venezuelan referendum fraud and seen the parallels is very $trange. The Venezuelan referendum is the "shining" example the E-voting people use to say their system works. Of course it was a shame. But 'Carter' said it was okay. Yes, and little Jimmy also was part of the commision that said e-voting and requiring picture ID was good too.

Wake up!! Crooks are crooks. For the right price they help each other out. Sell cheap oil=you win your election. Simple deal right.